Every day I get to work with some of the most innovative and entrepreneurial companies. They’re creative, agile, fun and inspirational. It really got me thinking about my own experience as an entrepreneur, and I thought about mistakes that I and other companies have made. What I came up with is a list of five common startup mistakes and why you should avoid them.
- Hiring specialists too quickly
Starting a business requires a lot of talent in multiple areas. Avoid hiring specialists (e.g. financial specialist, marketing director, HR, dedicated sales team). Start with folks who can wear multiple hats. Hiring someone who can handle simple bookkeeping while designing a simple flyer and answering customer phone calls is a more organic way to grow the business. As you scale, you can start to specialize.
- Poor delegation of start-up capital
Business A decides to dedicate half of their seed capital to a website, video and marketing collateral, while Business B dedicates none of their budget for any awareness or promotional materials. Which of these businesses are correct? Neither. Poor budgeting, or failure to budget altogether, can doom a business and suck funding dry before you get started.
- Wasting time on branding perfection
As a start up, you won’t have your voice and messaging nailed down. It takes time and it’s not always a good idea to force what you want your culture and brand to symbolize. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be set in stone, especially as you’re starting. Give your organization room to grow, organically evolve, and adapt to new market trends. The sooner you realize you cannot and should not micromanage this, the freer you will be to focus on building an innovative and agile company.
Giving each person on your team an equal voice in the decision making process may seem democratic, but ultimately can be a waste of time and may delay important decision making. Instead, one or two of the company leaders needs to make it clear that he/she will make the final call. An effective leader will listen to the team and evaluate needs, while making tough decisions that will benefit the company as a whole.
As an entrepreneur you clearly have vision, but that doesn’t mean it’s transparent to your entire team. You need to declare long-term and short-term objectives and map out how to reach them. It doesn’t need to be rocket science, but everyone should have a collective idea of what the plan is and the actions that should be taken to get there. This will lead to faster success.
KINGSMITH.
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